Need to boost your innovation initiative?
Need to deploy an effective way to gather ideas from your community?
Need to energize your team on the innovation side?

You have the idea to run an innovation challenge?

Running such a challenge is not a straight and easy things to do if you want to leverage all results and achieve a good outcome regarding both continuous improvement or disruptive innovation.

What is an Innovation challenge?

An innovation challenge is particular in the way that it has an end (a few weeks), it is focused on a topic and, most important and often forgotten, it is has dedidacted ressources to implement the ideas. The deliverables should be clear and precisely defined (xx ideas implemented…).

In that way, an Innovation Challenge should be run as a project.

Why running an Innovation Challenge?

3 main reasons can lead to an innovation challenge. Otherwise some other tools might be more suitable.

Want to solve specific problem and need ideas and insights

Want to aware people on a specific subject

Start your innovation initiative by a particular event.

Main steps to run an effective Innovation Challenge

Name the project manager

Define clear scope, duration and deliverables

Determine the topic of the challenge and verify that it is aligned with coprporate concerns and startegy

Define the wording of the question

Find implementation team, allow ressources

Define with mean will be used to set the challenge (dedicated software, sharepoint, email…)

Define the targeted peoples who will be able to take part to the challenge

Define a powerful and innovative (somehow funny) communication plan

Run your challenge.

Dont’t forget to clearly set to the audience what you are looking for (ideas? solutions? concepts?…)

Keep the power high by communicating regularly and encourage discussion and exchange

Lessons Learned

I have run more than 10 innovation challenges so far. Most of the last ones have been succes ful with more than 500 ideas submitted and more than 1M€ savings generated. Not speaking about new products under development…
The first ones were a disaster. No problem to say it. I have collected for a 3 months duration 5 ideas for my first challenge… Bad topic, bad communication, unclear problem to solve, too wide subject, not a single good practice. We wanted to do a wonderfull challenge but ended with a too wide and difficult to handle challenge. The employees simply didn’t understand the point.
Hopefully this first fail did not affect the future ones because it stayed relatively unknown and we managed to prove to the community that all means were present for the second one hich have been much more sucessful.

Lately a friend of mine asked me about what kind of books I would consider if asking about « must read » dealing with innovation: Here is my selection of 8 books that are, at the time, the ones I consider as the most valuable.

This is Service Design Thinking

This is Service Design Thinking

More than any other books even more than any other website or TV show speaking about IDEO, this is how I have discover Design Thinking and especially SERVICE Design Thinking. Still one of my favourite reference and reading. A comprehensive and useful website is available.

Lean Start-up

Lean Start-up by Eris ries

Is there really a need to come back to the Lean Start-up by Eric Ries? Nope. I have been deeply inspired by this book to develop my own approach of Lean Start-up in corporate, used in my company with wonderful results. If you had to choose one…

Business Model Canva and Value Proposition Design

Business Model canva et Value proposition design

The sister’s books that worth the reading. I have used and then spread it all around in my company. Benefits? Having a dedicated and common framework and vocabulary to speak about business model and value proposition and more than that, having engineers thinking about business 😉

The Standard for Portfolio Management

Dealing with Innovation projects is nothing else but managing a portfolio of projects. Thus the standard from the PMI(c) is fundamental because before being « innovation » they are « projects » a must be properly managed. pmi.org

Innovation Jugaad

Innovation Jugaad

In a time where money is missing and when you have to be more and more effective to be sure that every € you put inot innovation will produce some more € as a business, it is vital to do more with less. That’s what Innovation Jugaad is teaching!

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Réussir une négociation

Here is the French version of the famous negotiation book from Roger Fisher and the Havard Negotiation Project. A very useful book for Innovators and for everybody as we all have to negotiate one day or another. Most true for innovators who deals everyday

I don’t know about the english title of this book but as it has been written by the wonderful Bernie Sander it was originally in english. A very interesting book for those who have to run an idea management system.

The 15min Challenge

I have been recently challenged by a small company to increase their number of ideas. As I already wrote several times, most companies doesn’t need more ideas but they need good ideas and they need to select wisely the ideas to be implemented.

The goal of this mid sized company however was a bit different. Its CEO wanted a bit of continuous improvement rather than a real cutting-edge disruptive innovation. That’s hard time for the corporate at the moment and it is important to leverage the possibilities to enhance the performance of the organisation.

I have myself experimented several Continuous improvement tools that are close to collective intelligence and innovation. Two of them are in my pocket for such challenges 😉 But among the ones I have deployed there is a funny one (not that the other is boring). I have called it the 15min challenge. It has rather simple rules (which should be adapted according to your organisation culture, blue or white collars etc…)

Set the time zone
Define when you want to hold the 15 min challenge during the workday. sounds easy. Not so sure. Ask me if you want some more tips but believe me (or not) but that the most important task to perform in that method.

Put the 15 minutes in place
The deal is easy: at the established time, allow every single employee you have to step back 15min. During those 15min, one and only question: What keep me away from my best performance and how can I improve that? By myself. Of course answers can range from the lack of post-it(r) notes to organisational issues. One has a process for that 😉

Empower your employees
Once you have all your employees with so much improvements possibilities, put a governance in place that will allow them to modify , the way they work, for a better performance. Authors should also evaluate the benefits they could achieve. A lot of coordination is necessary from the challenge team and from the management. For more complex issues, problem solving techniques should be used (I also have tools for that ;-) ).

Measure the benefit
Work with your accounting department to evaluate the real benefits (ev. vs the costs). My experience shows tremendous results, sky-rocketing the expected savings. Can I guaranty a ROI? nope. I honestly don’t have enough samples to guaranty a ROI however, what I can say is that on the ones I have led, the ROI all included was average more than 3.

Celebrate
Find a way to celebrate the success with your team. That’s key within your management and your organisation.

And you are done. Seems simple but I have myself hold several challenges and each time I have been surprise by the preparation time needed and the coordination time necessary. So that’s a lot of work.

Have you experienced such a challenge or equivalent? What’s your feedback?

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